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Philippa Ryan

Scientist

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Philippa Ryan has been a scientist in the British Museum since
2011. Her research interests include archaeobotany, ethnobotany,
the food and non-food uses of plants, agricultural change,
agroecology, past human environments, and food security.

Philippa is analysing the charred macrobotanical remains (seeds,
grains and fruits), as well as phytoliths (microbotanical remains)
from the site of
Amara West. This research was initially funded in
2011 by the Leverhulme Trust as part of the ‘Health and diet in
occupied Nubia through political and climate change’ project.
Between (2013-2016) Philippa was Principal Investigator for the
‘Sustainability
and subsistence systems in a changing Sudan’ project.
She has been investigating ancient and recent crop changes using
ethnobotanical and archaeobotanical methods. This includes
interviewing farmers about agricultural systems, further
archaeobotanical research at Amara West, and placing results from
these case-studies within a broader temporal overview of what is
known about crop choices from other archaeobotanical, ethnographic
and agricultural studies.

Philippa is currently Principal Investigator for the ‘Learning from
the past: Nubian traditional knowledge and agricultural resilience,
crop choices and endangered cultural heritage’ project (2017–2018).
This is funded through the AHRC ‘Follow-on Funding for Impact and
Engagement Scheme’ to produce new outputs for the ‘Sustainability
and subsistence systems in a changing Sudan’ project. Research aims
include to advocate the importance of using local agricultural
knowledge to help create strategies for agricultural resilience, to
highlight the potential future role of increasingly little-used
crops, and to explore how ethnobotanical and archaeobotanical
approaches can contribute to debates and future agricultural
strategies. A key output is the creation and distribution of a
community orientated book ‘Nubia past and present; agriculture
crops and food’.

Prior to joining the British Museum, Philippa completed her PhD in
2010 at the UCL Institute of Archaeology entitled ‘Diversity of
plant and land use during the Near Eastern Neolithic, phytolith
perspectives from çatalhöyük’. Philippa has also worked as a
phytolith analyst for several projects in Mali (Timbuktu Expedition
Project), Turkmenistan (Monjukli Depe), Italy (Ancient Stabiae
Garden Project at the Villa Arianna), Egypt (Hieronkoplis), as well
as at for other projects in Sudan (including the Kerma Ancien
cemetery H29).

Previous projects

Hierakonpolis: phytolith analysis of gut
contents from an animal cemetery

Grants Awarded

Principle Investigator for an Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC) and Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Research Grant
(Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement Scheme, Early Career
Route): Learning from the past: Nubian traditional knowledge and
agricultural resilience, crop choices and endangered cultural
heritage (2017 – 2018).

Ryan P. and Rosen A. 2016 Managing risk through
diversification in plant exploitation during the 7th millennium BC:
the microbotanical (phytolith) record at Çatalhöyük. In P.F. Biehl
and O. Nieuwenhuyse (eds) Climate and Cultural Change in
Prehistoric Europe and the Near East, Volume 3 of the Distinguished
Monograph Series of the Institute for European and Mediterranean
Archaeology, Suny Press, New York